Summary Of The Strangers That Came To Town

To judge a book by its cover is to form an opinion before you even dare to open the book and discover what’s inside. In society, it’s very common that people are quick to make a judgment about someone based solely on what they see. In his short story, The Strangers that Came to Town, Ambrose Flack is showing that true freedom is about being accepted. This is shown by the transformation of Andy's perspective on the Duvitches, the judgments made by the locals about the Duvitches, and how Andy's family forever changed how the Duvitches were treated on Syringa street. We often underestimate people and fail to recognize the things that they are capable of doing. Some of the greatest people in the world were shunned for their differences simply
This was a reality for the Duvitch family who lived with a bow of disappointment from every local in town. They were very quick to make rumours and assumptions about Mrs. Duvtich when they noticed that she did not leave the house very often. This is shown when Andy states, “The women started in on Mrs. Duvitch because she “never showed her face.” It is true, she was rarely if ever, seen in the daytime, emerging from her dwelling only after dark in warm weather, to sit on the veranda, where she found privacy behind the ragged trumpet creeper. But this gave rise to the rumour that she was the victim of an obscure skin disease and that every morning she shook scales out of the bed sheet.” (Flack, 3). The rise of this rumour was based upon the fact that the Duvitche family were different in their community. They were the first of their kind to settle i the town and did not have similar qualities as the other locals, “But the Duvitche’s were marked people. They were the one struggling family in a prosperous community—and poverty, amid prosperity, is often embarrassing and irritating to the prosperous.” (Flack, 3). Not only did the locals not extend their welcome and kindness, but they treated the Duvitch family with a different form of respect, the form of respect that did not exist. “Even the tradesmen to whom the Duvitches
Andy’s family took a leap of faith and broke out of the town's standards to welcome the Duvitches into their community. This created a new possibility for them and for all of the locals from Syringa street. From the start Andy’s mother always had a kind heart for her neighbours, “But Mother, remembering the potted rose tree, always had a friendly word and a smile for the young Duvitches when she saw them and a bone for Kasimar when he found courage to venture across the road. Father was the only man on Syringa Street who tipped his hat to sixteen-year-old Maria Duvitch, when he met her coming home from her piece-work job in Miller’s Box Factory.” (Flack,5). In the end, she opens the door for Mrs. Duvitch to prove herself upon the other women in town who began to realize her true potential. Andy’s father was the start to the end of all discrimination. He paved a path that soon all locals walked on to the acceptance of this family who turned out to be much more than they thought. Andy’s father states, “I’t is high time,’ Tom and I heard Father say calmly, sanely, to Mother around noon next day when we woke up, ‘for this senseless feeling against the Duvitches to stop and I’m willing to do still more to stop it.’” (Flack, 13). True freedom was restored once the locals saw the Duvitches as being the same and accepted their differences, “People, often persuaded to accept what we accepted, to believe what